Editor's Note: These are extended excerpts of transcriptions of telephone interviews I did as part of my research for my 1980 articles on The Raleigh Call. The man who identified himself as "John David Hurt" consistently denied knowledge as to why Lee Oswald would have called him from the Dallas jail cell, and he also denied having attempted to place a call to Oswald. The interview with Victor Marchetti was a follow-up to quotes attributed to him in Anthony Summers' book Conspiracy, in which Marchetti said that Hurt was operating as Oswald's "cut-out." -- G.Proctor

I do not. I never heard of the man before President Kennedy's death. I was a great Kennedyphile, and I would have been more inclined to kill him than anything else.

PROCTOR:

Oswald, you mean.

HURT:

Yes

PROCTOR:

Did you place a call that day to the Dallas jail?

HURT:

No, I did not, and he didn't place a call to me either, I don't know how I ever got [unintelligible].

PROCTOR:

Do you have any explanation as to why your name ...

HURT:

None whatever.

PROCTOR:

Do you have the telephone number 833-1253 (the second number on the slip) in any of your business associations?

HURT:

No.

PROCTOR:

Did you in 1963?

HURT:

No, I did not.

PROCTOR:

That was the other number listed on the telephone slip beside your name.

HURT:

I don't know. My number has been the same for, oh, I'd say forty years.

PROCTOR:

In speaking with another investigator that called you about six years ago, you indicated at that time that during World War II you were in the Counterintelligence Division. Is that correct?

HURT:

That's correct.

PROCTOR:

You left that, and went into investigative work after the war.

HURT:

I was in insurance claims adjusting work, and I worked for a year for the state as a [unintelligible].

PROCTOR:

Were you ever involved as an agent in the Defense Department's Industrial Security Command?

HURT:

No, I was not.

PROCTOR:

So, once again, you have no knowledge of any call made from your number or to your number that day?

HURT:

No knowledge whatsover.

Excerpts of Interview With Victor Marchetti

PROCTOR:

If you were, as an agent, in trouble somewhere in America ....

MARCHETTI:

I was never an agent. I was an officer.

PROCTOR:

Okay, if someone were an agent, and he were involved in something, and nobody believes he is an agent. He is arrested, and trying to communicate, let's say, and he is one of you guys. What is the procedure?

MARCHETTI:

I'd kill him.

PROCTOR:

If I were an agent for the [Central Intelligence] Agency, and I was involved in something involving the law domestically and the FBI, would I have a contact to call?

MARCHETTI:

Yes.

PROCTOR:

A verification contact?

MARCHETTI:

Yes, you would.

PROCTOR:

Would I be dead?

MARCHETTI:

It would depend on the situation. If you get into bad trouble, we're not going to verify you. No how, no way.

PROCTOR:

But there is a call mechanism set up.

MARCHETTI:

Yes.

PROCTOR:

So it is conceivable that Lee Harvey Oswald was ....

MARCHETTI:

That's what he was doing. He was trying to call in and say, "Tell them I'm all right."

PROCTOR:

Was that his death warrant?

MARCHETTI:

You betcha. Because this time he went over the dam, whether he knew it or not, or whether they set him up or not. He was over the dam. At this point it was executive action [assassination].

PROCTOR:

Is the contact person's name ever the name of someone who is not necessarily an active agent but is just a contact person?

MARCHETTI:

That's right.

PROCTOR:

Then that person would go up to the next level?

MARCHETTI:

That's right, and it would be a "funny name" -- a pseudonym. Like for example, you would have a number to call. If you were my agent, and you got yourself into a peck of trouble, you might try to contact me, but maybe you can't get through.

PROCTOR:

I would contact you by telephone, right?

MARCHETTI:

Yes. But I might have covered my tracks real good so you can't contact me by telephone. In other words, I contact you, you don't contact me. But I give you a [unintelligible] number. So you call him, but I've already talked to him and said, "Don't touch him." You're screwed up.

PROCTOR:

But you would use, for that middle man, people who were not necessarily active agents or agency people, right?

MARCHETTI:

That's right. Most likely they would be cut-outs. You would have to call indirectly.

PROCTOR:

Could Oswald have had a name ....

MARCHETTI:

He was probably calling his cut-out. He was calling somebody who could put him in touch with his case officer. He couldn't go beyond that person. There's no way he could. He just had to depend on this person to say, "Okay, I'll deliver the message." Now, if the cut-out has already been alerted to cut him off and ignore him, then [unintelligible].

Dr. Grover B. Proctor, Jr. is a historian and former university Dean who is widely acknowledged as an expert on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He has published numerous articles, lectured extensively, and has frequently been consulted by print and broadcast media.
While most of his work comprises analysis and interpretation of the assassination research phenomenon, he broke new ground in the investigation in the early 1980's with his work on Lee Harvey Oswald's alleged telephone call from the Dallas jail to a former military counterintelligence agent in Raleigh, N.C.

These documents have been collected and are being shared purely as an educational service to benefit historians and researchers who have an interest in this subject matter. Use of all materials is intended to fall under the "public domain" and/or "fair use" protection of U.S. copyright law, and they are reproduced for no purpose that involves monetary gain